pandemonium 18 страница

“It’s all over the news, ” I interrupt her. I’m getting into my role now: the rich, spoiled daughter of a politician, maybe a senior member of the DFA. A girl used to getting her way. “Of course, I guess you wanted to keep the whole thing hush-hush. Don’t want the press charging in. Don’t worry, they’re not saying where. But I have friends who have friends and … well, you know how these things get around. ” I lean forward, placing both hands on the desk, like she’s my best friend and I’m about to tell her a secret. “Personally, I think it’s a little bit silly, isn’t it? If Dr. Branshaw had just given him the cure early, when he was already in there—a little cut, a little snip, that’s how it works, isn’t it? —this whole thing could have been avoided. ” I lean back. “I’m going to tell him I think so, too, when I see him. ” I say a silent prayer that Dr. Branshaw is, in fact, male. It’s a decently safe bet. Medical training is long and rigorous, and many intelligent women are expected to spend their time fulfilling their procreative and child-rearing duties instead.

“It isn’t Dr. Branshaw’s case, ” the nurse says quickly. “He can’t be blamed. ”

I roll my eyes the way that Hana used to when Andrea Grengol said something especially stupid in class. “Of course it is. Everyone knows Dr. Branshaw is Julian’s primary. ”

“Dr. Hillebrand is Julian’s primary, ” she corrects me.

I feel a quick pulse of excitement, but I hide it with another eye roll. “Whatever. Are you going to page Dr. Branshaw or not? ” I fold my arms and add, “I won’t go until I’ve seen him. ”

She gives me the look of an injured animal—reproachful, as though I’ve reached out and pinched her nose. I’m disrupting her morning, the routine stillness of her hours. “ID, please, ” she says.

I fish Sarah Beth Miller’s ID from my pocket and pass it to her. The sound of the clock seems to have amplified: The ticking is overloud, and the air in the room vibrates with it. All I can focus on are the seconds, ticking away, ticking Julian closer to death. I force myself not to fidget as she looks it over, frowning again.

“I can’t read this number, ” she says.

“It went through the dryer last year. ” I wave the issue away. “Look, I’d appreciate it if you could just speak to Dr. Branshaw for me—if you could tell him I’m here. ”

“I’ll have to call you into SVS, ” she says. Now the expression of unhappiness is deepened. She casts a doleful look behind her at the coffeepot, and I notice a magazine halfhidden underneath a stack of files. She is no doubt thinking about the evaporation of her peaceful morning. She hauls herself to her feet. She is a heavy woman. The buttons on her technician’s uniform seem to be hanging on for dear life, barely keeping the fabric closed over her breasts and stomach. “Have a seat. This will take a few minutes. ”

I incline my head once, and she waddles through the rows of filing cabinets and disappears. A door opens, and for a moment I hear the sound of a telephone, and the swelling of voices. Then the door shuts, and everything is quiet except for the ticking of the clock.

Instantly, I push through the double doors.

The look of money does not extend this far. Here, at last, are the same dull linoleum tiling, the same dingy beige walls, of so many labs and hospitals. Immediately to my left is another set of double doors, marked EMERGENCY EXIT; through a small glass panel, I see a narrow stairwell.

I move quickly down the hall, my sneakers squeaking on the floor, scanning the doors on either side of me—most of them closed, some of them gaping open, empty, dark.

A female doctor with a stethoscope looped around her neck is walking toward me, consulting a file. She looks up at me curiously as I pass. I keep my eyes locked on the ground. Fortunately, she doesn’t stop me. I palm the back of my pants. My hands are sweating.

The lab is small, and when I reach the end of the hall, I see that it is laid out simply: Only a single corridor runs the length of the building, and an elevator bank in the back gives access to the remaining six floors. I have no plan except to find Julian, to see him. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to achieve, but the weight of the knife is reassuring, pressed against my stomach, a hard-edged secret.

I take an elevator to the second floor. Here there is more activity: sounds of beeping and murmured conversation, doctors hurrying in and out of examination rooms. I duck quickly into the first door on my right, which turns out to be a bathroom. I take a deep breath, try to focus, try to calm down. There is a tray on the back of the toilet, and a stack of plastic cups meant for urine samples. I grab one and fill it partially with water, then head back into the hall.

Two lab techs, both women, are standing outside one of the examination rooms. They fall silent as I approach, and even though I am deliberately avoiding eye contact, I can feel them staring at me.

“Can I help you? ” one of them asks, as I am passing. Both women look identical, and for a moment I think they are twins. But it is just the influence of the scraped-back hair, the spotless uniforms, the identical look of clinical detachment.

I flash the plastic cup at them. “Just need to get my sample to Dr. Hillebrand, ” I say.

She withdraws a fraction of an inch. “Dr. Hillebrand’s attendant is on six, ” she says. “You can leave it with her. ”

“Thanks, ” I say. I can feel their eyes trailing me as I continue down the hall. The air is dry, overheated, and my throat hurts every time I try to swallow. At the end of the hall, I pass a doorway paneled in glass. Beyond it, I see several patients sitting in armchairs, watching television in white paper gowns. Their arms and legs are strapped to the furniture.

At the end of the hall, I push through the doors into the stairwell. In all probability, Dr. Hillebrand will be presiding over Julian’s death, and if his attendant is on the sixth floor, there’s a good chance that is where he conducts the majority of his work. My legs are shaking by the time I get to six, and I’m not sure whether it’s nerves, or lack of sleep, or a combination of both. I ditch the plastic cup, then pause for a second to catch my breath. Sweat is tracing its way down my back.

Please, I think, to nobody in particular. I’m not sure what I’m asking for, exactly. A chance to save him. A chance, even, to see him. I need him to know that I came for him.

I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him.

Please.

The moment I emerge from the stairwell, I know that I have found it: Fifty feet down the hall, Thomas Fineman is standing outside the door to an examination room, arms crossed, with several bodyguards, speaking in low tones to a doctor and three lab techs.

Two, three seconds. I have only a few seconds until they’ll turn, until they’ll spot me and ask me what I’m doing here.

Their conversation is indecipherable from this distance—they are speaking practically in whispers—and for a second my heart bottoms out and I know that it’s too late, and it has already happened, and Julian is dead.

Then the doctor—Dr. Hillebrand? —consults his watch. The next words he speaks are louder—impossibly loud, in the space and the silence, as though he is shouting them.

“It’s time, ” he says, and as the group starts to unknot, my three seconds are up. I rocket into the first door I see. It’s a small examination room, thankfully empty.

I don’t know what to do next. Panic is building in my chest. Julian is here, so close, and totally unreachable. There were at least three bodyguards with Thomas Fineman, and I have no doubt there are more inside. I’ll never make it past them.

I lean against the door, willing myself to focus, to think. I’ve ended up in a small antechamber. In one wall is a door that I know must lead to a larger procedural room, where complex surgeries and the procedure to cure deliria take place.

A paper-draped table dominates the small space: On it are folded gowns, and a tray of surgical instruments. The room smells like bleach and looks identical to the room in which I undressed for my evaluation, almost a year ago, on the day that started it all, that rocketed me forward and landed me here, in this new body, in this new future. For a second I feel dizzy and have to close my eyes. When I open them, I have the feeling of looking at two mirrors that have been placed face-to-face, of being pushed from the past to the now and back again. Memories begin budding, welling up—the walk to the labs in the sticky Portland air, the wheeling seagulls, the first time I saw Alex, the dark cavern of his mouth as he looked at me from the observation deck, laughing…

It hits me: the observation deck. Alex was watching me from an observation deck that ran the length of the procedural room. If this lab is laid out like the one in Portland, I might be able to access Julian’s room from the seventh floor.

I move cautiously into the hall again. Thomas Fineman is gone, and only a single bodyguard remains. For a moment I debate whether I should take my chances on him—the knife is there, heavy, waiting, like an urge—but then he turns his eyes in my direction. They are colorless, hard, like two stones; they make me draw back, as though he has reached down the length of the hall and hit me.

Before he can say anything, before he has time to register my face, I slip around the corner and into the stairwell.

The seventh floor is darker and dingier than any of the others. It is perfectly silent: no conversations humming behind closed doors, no steady beep of medical machinery or lab techs squeaking down the halls in white sneakers. Everything is still, as though the air up here is not often disturbed. A series of doorways extends down the hall on my right. My heart leaps when I see the first one is labeled OBSERVATION DECK A.

I ease down the hall on tiptoe. There’s obviously no one up here, but the quiet makes me nervous. There is something ominous about all the closed doors, the air heavy and hot like a blanket; I get the creeping feeling that someone is watching me, that all the doors are mouths, ready to open and scream out my presence.

The last door in the hall is marked OBSERVATION DECK D. My palms are sweating so badly, I can barely twist open the door handle. At the last second I remove my knife from the front pocket of my wind breaker, just in case, and uncoil Mrs. Fineman’s T-shirt from around the blade. Then I drop into a crouch and scuttle through the door onto the observation deck. I’m gripping the knife so tightly, my knuckles ache.

The deck is big, dark, and empty, and shaped like an L, extending along two whole walls of the procedural room below. It is completely enclosed in glass and contains four tiered rows of chairs, all of which look down over the main floor. It smells like a movie theater, like damp upholstery and gum.

I ease down the stairs of the deck, keeping close to the ground, grateful that the lights in the observation deck are off—and grateful, too, that the low plaster wall that encircles the deck, underneath the heavy panels of glass, should conceal me at least partially from the view of anyone below me. I ease off my backpack and place it carefully next to me. My shoulders are aching.

I have no idea what to do next.

The lights in the procedural room are dazzling. There is a metal table in the center of the room, and a couple of lab techs circulating, adjusting equipment, moving things out of the way. Thomas Fineman and a few other men—the men from the hall—have been moved into an adjacent room; it, too, is enclosed in glass, and although chairs have been set up for them, they are all standing. I wonder what Fineman is thinking. I think, briefly, of Julian’s mother. I wonder where she is.

I don’t see Julian anywhere.

A flash of light. I think explosion—I think run—and everything in me knots up, tight and panicked, until I notice that in one corner is a man with a camera and a media badge clipped to his tie. He is taking pictures of the setup, and the glare of the flash bounces off all the polished metal surfaces, zigzagging up the walls.

Of course. I should have known that the media would be invited to take pictures. They must record it, and broadcast it, in order for it to have any meaning.

The hatred surges, and with it, a cresting, swelling wave of fury. All of them can burn.

There is motion from the corner, from the part of the room concealed underneath the deck. I see Thomas Fineman and the other men swivel in that direction. Behind the glass, Thomas wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, the first sign of discomfort he has shown. The cameraman swivels too: flash, flash. Two moments of blinding white light.

Then Julian enters the room. He is flanked by two regulators, although he is walking on his own, without prompting. They are tailed by a man wearing the high white collar of a priest; he holds a gold-bound copy of The Book of Shhh in front of his chest, like a talisman to protect him from everything dirty and terrible in the world.

The hatred is a cord, tightening around my throat.

Julian’s hands have been handcuffed in front of him, and he is wearing a dark blue blazer and neatly pressed jeans. I wonder if that was his choice, or whether they made him dress up for his own execution. He is facing away from me and I will him, silently, to turn around, to look up. I need him to know that I’m here. I need him to know he’s not alone. I reach my hand out unthinkingly, grope along the glass. I want to smash it to pieces, to jump down and swoop Julian away. But it would never work. I could not get more than a few feet, and then it would be a double execution.

Maybe it no longer matters. I have nothing left, nothing to return to.

The regulators have stopped at the table. There is a swelling of conversation—I hear Julian say, “I’d rather not lie down. ” His voice is muffled and indistinct—from the glass, from the height—but the sound of it makes me want to scream. Now my whole body is a heartbeat, a throbbing urge to do something. But I’m frozen, heavy as stone.

One of the regulators steps forward and unchains Julian’s hands. Julian pivots so I can see his face. He circles his wrists, forward and back, wincing a bit. Almost immediately, the regulator clips his right wrist to one of the legs of the metal table, pushing down on Julian’s shoulder so he is forced to sit. He has not once looked at his father.

In the corner of the room, the doctor is washing his hands in a large sink. The water drumming against the metal is overloud. It is too quiet. Surely executions can’t happen here, like this, in the bright and the silence. The doctor dries his hands, works his fingers into a pair of latex surgical gloves.

The priest steps forward and begins to read. His voice is a low drone, a monotone, muffled through the glass.

“And so Isaac grew and was the pride of his aged father, and for a time a perfect reflection of Abraham’s will…”

He is reading from the Book of Abraham. Of course. In it, God commands Abraham to kill his only son, Isaac, after Isaac becomes sick with the deliria. And so he does. He takes his son to a mountain and plunges a knife straight through his chest. I wonder whether Mr. Fineman requested that this passage be read. Obedience to God, to safety, to the natural order: That is what the Book of Abraham teaches us.

“But when Abraham saw that Isaac had become unclean, he asked in his heart for guidance…”

I am swallowing back Julian’s name. Look at me.

The doctor and two lab techs step forward. The doctor has a syringe. He is testing it, flicking its barrel with a finger, as a lab tech rolls Julian’s shirt to his elbow.

Just then there is a disturbance from below. It ripples through the room at once. Julian looks up sharply; the doctor steps away from him and replaces the syringe on the metal tray one of the lab techs carries. Thomas Fineman leans over, frowning, and whispers something to a bodyguard, as another lab tech bursts into the room. I can’t make out what she’s saying—I can tell it’s a she, even though she’s wearing a paper mask and a bulky, too-big lab coat, because of the braid swinging down her back—but she is gesturing agitatedly.

Something is wrong.

I inch closer to the glass, straining to hear what she is saying. A thought is fluttering in the back of my mind, an idea I can’t quite hold on to. There’s something familiar about the lab tech, about the way she keeps using her hands, gesturing emphatically as she points the doctor out into the hall. He shakes his head, removes his gloves, and balls them up into his pocket. He barks a short command before striding out of the procedural room. One of the lab techs scurries after him.

Thomas Fineman is pushing his way to the door that gives entry to the lab. Julian is pale, and even from here I can tell that he is sweating. His voice is higher than normal, strained.

“What’s going on? ” His voice floats up to me. “Someone tell me what’s happening. ”

The lab tech with the braid has moved across the room and is opening the door for Thomas Fineman. She reaches into her lab coat as he bursts into the room, red-faced.

And just when the idea breaks, washes over me—the braid, the hands, Raven—there is a single explosion, a cracking noise, and Thomas Fineman’s mouth falls open, and he teeters ackward and slumps to the ground as red petals of blood bloom outward across his shirt front.

For a moment, everything seems to freeze: Thomas Fineman, splayed on the ground like a rag doll; Julian, white-faced on the table; the journalist with the camera still raised to his eye; the priest in the corner; the regulators next to Julian, weapons still strapped to their belts; Raven holding a gun.

Flash.

The lab tech, the real one, screams.

And everything is chaos.

More gunshots, ricocheting around the room. The regulators are screaming, “Down! Get down! ”

Crack. A bullet lodges in the thick glass directly above my head, and from it a web of fissures begins to grow. That’s all I need. I grab a chair from behind me and swing it, hard, in an arc, praying that Julian has his head down.

The sound is tremendous, and for a split second everything is silent again except for the cascade of glass, a sharp-pointed rain. Then I vault over the concrete wall and drop to the floor below me. Glass crunches under my sneakers as I land, off balance, tipping down onto one hand to steady myself, which comes up smeared with blood.

Raven is a blur of motion. She twists her body out of reach of a regulator, doubles back, cracks down hard on his knee with the butt of her gun. As he bends forward, she plants a foot in his back and pushes: a crack as his head collides with the metal sink. And she is already turning toward the room that contains Fineman’s bodyguards, shoving a small metal scalpel into the keyhole of the door, jamming it. She wedges a metal rolling tray in front of the door for good measure. Medical instruments scatter everywhere as they push, shouting, tilting the table several inches. But the door won’t open, at least not just yet.

I’m ten feet from Julian—shouting, gunshots, and now an alarm is wailing, shrieking—then five feet, then next to him, grabbing his arms, his shoulders, wanting simply to feel him, to make sure he’s real.

“Lena! ” He has been struggling with the handcuff that keeps one of his wrists clipped to the table, trying to pry it off. Now he looks up, eyes bright, shining, blue as sky. “What are you—”

“No time, ” I tell him. “Stay low. ”

I sprint toward the regulator still slumped by the sinks. Dimly, I am aware of shouting, and Raven still turning, spinning, ducking—from a distance, she might be dancing—and muffled explosions. The journalist is gone; he must have run.

The regulator is barely conscious. I kneel down and slice off his belt, quick, then grab the keys and sprint back toward the table. My right palm is wet with blood, but I can barely feel the pain. It takes me two tries to fit the key in the lock on the handcuffs; then I do, and Julian pulls his wrist free of the table, and draws me toward him.

“You came, ” he says.

“Of course, ” I say.

Then Raven is next to us. “Time to move. ”

A minute, maybe less, and Thomas Fineman is dead, and the room is chaos, and we are free.

We sprint through the antechamber just as there is a shuddering, tinny crash, a clattering of metal, and a crescendo of shouts—the bodyguards must have gotten out. Then we duck into the hall, where the alarms are blaring and already we can hear pounding feet from the stairwell.

Raven jerks her head to the right, toward a door marked ROOFTOP ACCESS, EMERGENCIES ONLY. We move quickly, in silence, wound up—through the door and onto the fire escape. Then we pound down the metal stairs, single file, toward the street level. Raven wrestles out of her oversized lab coat and slips off the paper mask, discarding them in a Dumpster just underneath the stairs. I wonder where she got them, and I flash to the heavy woman at the front desk, her breasts nearly exploding out of her lab coat.

“This way, ” Raven says shortly, as soon as we’re on the ground. When she turns her head, I see that she has several small cuts on her cheek and neck; the glass must have skimmed her.

We’ve ended up in a small, dingy courtyard, dominated by a set of rusted patio furniture and a patch of wiry brown grass. It is enclosed in a low chain-link fence, which Raven climbs easily. It is a little harder for me, and Julian, who is following, puts a hand up to steady me. My hand has started throbbing, and the chain-link is slick. It’s raining harder now.

On the other side of the fence is another tiny courtyard, nearly identical to the first, and another bleak brown building. Raven charges right through the door, which has been propped open with a cinder block, and we pass into a dark hall, and more closed doors affixed with gold placards. For a second I panic that we’ve ended up back in the labs. But then we emerge into a large lobby, also dark, and outfitted with several fake potted plants and various signs that point the way to EDWARD WU, ESQ. and METROPOLITAN VISION ASSOCIATES.. A set of glass revolving doors gives us a blurry view of the street outside: people streaming by, carrying umbrellas, jostling one another.

Raven heads right for the doors, pausing just long enough to scoop up a backpack she must have stashed earlier behind one of the plants. She turns around and tosses Julian and me an umbrella each. She slips on a yellow rain slicker and pulls the hood up over her head, cinching it tight so the cuts on her face are concealed.

Then we are flowing out into the street, moving into the blur of people on their way to or from somewhere—a faceless crowd, a mass of moving bodies. Never have I been more grateful for the hugeness of Manhattan, for its appetite; we are swallowed in it and by it, we become no one and anyone: a woman in a yellow poncho; a short girl in a red wind breaker; a boy with his face concealed by an enormous umbrella.

We make a right on Eighth Avenue, then a left on 24th Street. By now we have escaped the crowd: The streets are empty, the buildings blind, curtains drawn and shutters closed against the rain. Light smolders behind tissue-thin curtains above us; rooms turned inward, with their backs up against the street. We go undetected, unobserved, through the gray and watery world. The gutters are gushing, swirling with trash, bits of paper and cigarette butts. I have dropped Julian’s hand, but he walks close to me, adjusting his stride to the rhythm of my walk, so we are almost touching.

We come to a parking lot, empty except for a white van I recognize: the van outfitted like a CRAP cruiser. I think once again of my mother, but this is no time to ask Raven about her. Raven unlocks the double doors at the back of the van and flips off her hood.

“In, ” she says.

Julian hesitates for a second. I see his eyes skating over the words: CITY OF NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, REFORM, AND PURIFICATION.

“It’s okay, ” I say, and climb into the back, sitting cross-legged on the dirty floor. He follows me in. Raven nods at me and shuts the door behind us. I hear her climb into the passenger seat. Then there is silence except for the drumming rain on the thin tin ceiling. Its rhythm sends a humming vibration through my whole body. It’s cold.

“What—, ” Julian asks, but I shush him. We are not out of danger, not yet, and I will not relax until we are safely out of the city. I use the wind breaker to wipe the blood off my palm, ball up its hem, and squeeze.

We hear pounding footsteps, the driver’s door opening, and Tack’s voice, a grunt. “Got ’em? ”

Raven’s reply: “Would I be here if I hadn’t? ”

“You’re bleeding. ”

“Just a scratch. ”

“Let’s roll, then. ”

The engine shudders to life, and all of a sudden I could shout for joy. Raven and Tack are back—snapping at each other, as they have always done and will always do. They came for me, and now we will go north: We are on the same side again. We will return to the Wilds, and I’ll see Hunter again, and Sarah, and Lu.

We will curl back into ourselves, like a fern folding up against the frost, and leave the resistance to its guns and its plans, and the Scavengers to their tunnels, and the DFA to their cures, and the whole world to its sickness and blindness. We will let it fall to ruin. We will be safe, shielded under the trees, nesting like birds.

And I have Julian. I found him, and he followed me. I reach out in the half dark, wordlessly, and find his hands. We interlace our fingers, and though he doesn’t say anything either, I can feel the warmth and energy passing between us, a soundless dialogue. Thank you, he is saying, and I am saying, I am so happy, I am so happy, I needed you to be safe.

I hope he understands.

I have not slept in twenty-four hours, and despite the jerking motion of the van, and the thunderous sound of the rain, at some point, I fall asleep. When I wake, it is because Julian is speaking my name quietly. I am resting on his lap, inhaling the smell of his jeans. I sit up quickly, embarrassed, rubbing my eyes.

“We’ve stopped, ” he says, although it’s obvious. The rain has faded to a gentle patter. The van doors slam; Raven and Tack are hooting, exuberant and loud. We must have made it well past the border.

The double doors swing open and there Raven is, beaming, and Tack behind her, arms crossed, looking pleased with himself. I recognize the old warehouse from the cracked surface of the parking lot, and the peaked outhouse behind Tack.

Raven offers me her hand, helping me scoot out of the van. Her grip is strong.

“What’s the magic phrase? ” she says, as soon as my feet hit the pavement. She is relaxed now, smiling and easy.

“How did you find me? ” I ask. She wants me to say thank you, but I don’t. I don’t have to. She gives my hand a squeeze before pulling away, and I know she knows how grateful I am.

“There was only one place you would be, ” she says, and her eyes flick behind me, to Julian, and then back to me. And I know that is her way of making peace with me, and admitting she was wrong.

Julian has climbed out of the van too, and he is staring around him, wide-eyed, mouth hanging open. His hair is still wet, and has started to curl just a little at the ends.

“It’s okay, ” I say to him. I reach back and take his hand. The joy surges through me again. Here it is okay to hold hands, to huddle together for warmth, to mold ourselves together at night, like statues designed to fit side by side.

“Come on! ” Tack is walking backward, half skipping, toward the warehouse. “We’re packing up and moving out. We’ve lost a day already. Hunter will be waiting with the others in Connecticut. ”

Raven hitches her backpack a little higher and winks. “You know how Hunter gets when he’s cranky, ” she says. “We better get moving. ”

I can sense Julian’s confusion. The patter of dialogue and strange names, the closeness of the trees, untrimmed and untended, must be overwhelming. But I will teach him, and he will love it. He will learn and love, and love to learn. The words stream through me—calming, beautiful. There is time for absolutely everything now.